The Structural Chemistry of Hydrogenous Materials

Completed

Not Energy Related
Hydrogen and Fuel Cells(Hydrogen)

Basic and strategic applied research

PHYSICAL SCIENCES AND MATHEMATICS (Chemistry)

Not Cross-cutting

Professor M T Weller
Chemistry
University of Bath

Standard

EPSRC

05 November 2007

04 November 2010

36 months

£273,652

Chemical measurement

South West

Physical Sciences

Professor M T Weller, Chemistry, University of Bath

Dr M Light, School of Chemistry, University of Southampton

Project Contact, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL)
Project Contact, Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), Grenoble, France
Project Contact, Oaklands College

The most common element in the universe is hydrogen and it is found in numerous compounds of use to mankind. As well as the organic compounds of life, including food and pharmaceuticals many useful inorganic materials and minerals contain hydrogen. Examples include compounds exploited in fuel cells and to store hydrogen. Environmental chemistry aspects include the presence of hydrogen in materials such as clays and metal ores as well as in the corrosion products of many metals e.g. rust. As yetscientists do not have a reliable and easy applied method of finding where the hydrogen atoms are in many of these compounds; the aim of this project is to find and develop such a method. We intend to do this by using a unique probe of the very light hydrogen atom - which is through scattering a beam of neutrons from the material. Normally such neutron scattering is very poor for hydrogen containing compounds but by using very high numbers of neutrons and applying sophisticated methods of collecting and analysing the data we should be able for the first time achieve our goal. Once we have done this we will be able to find where the hydrogen atoms are in many useful materials and this will in term lead to an a better understanding of, and hence improvement in, their propertie

01/06/07